Thanks to the original owner of these books we have the first additional snippet. This one regarding the famous Edinburgh “Body-snatchers” and murderers, Burke & Hare. William Burke was hanged for the crimes but, as noted in this excerpt, William Hare “turned King’s evidence” against his partner-in-crime and was freed to live quite the pathetic life after apparently becoming blind in a lime-pit after his colleagues found out who he was.

The second additional piece of information added by the previous owner is this letter from a D. Guthrie with regards the whereabouts of “the skulls of Darnley and the Regent Morton”. The handwritten note at the bottom suggests “[Darnley’s] skull was blown up in London blitz.” It then goes one to describe the “grisly relics” in the Anatomical Museum, Teviot Place, within the Medical School Building of Edinburgh University; the “Casts of 1. Skull of Robert the Bruce, and2. of mummified head of the Earl of Bothwell, [last & most controversial] husband of Mary, Queen of Scots.

Mummified (and petrified) heart of William the Lion, King of Scotland, 1536-78.

Skull of [Scottish historian and scholar] George Buchanan, 1506-82.

Also, of course, such well known relics as the Black Dwarf’s bones, and the skeleton of William Burke.”